Ambient temperature is around 25°C, and I've not put any cooling device on. Power supply is through the microUSB port using a 5V 2A USB charger. I've read at various places on this forum that the expected temperature in that case should rather be in the 30-40°C range.

Should I worry, or is it a perfectly normal temperature? If not, what could I try to lower it?

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This is my OPi Zero before latest updates: http://sprunge.us/Uacg (you can see at the end at which versions the installation was regarding u-boot and kernel).

We had a known miscalibration of thermal data on H3/H2+ for almost a year (IIRC it was related to reading out the so called SID from the CPU and since this was broken thermal readouts were 10°C-15°C off -- too low). I now did the upgrade but temperatures didn't change that much after the reboot with most recent u-boot version (but the SID change led to another well known problem: changing MAC addresses once

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Okaie, thanks. In the meantime, I've also tried replacing the power supply by another one (also a 5V 2.5A), and with the exact same setup, I now only get 49°C idle! So maybe the first power brick I used was not very good. I'll try to get a hold on better ones or design my custom regulated 5V psu block.

Your readings are indeed reassuring. I'll put a small heatsink on the Zero, and it should do it. I don't plan any heavy duty on those anyway.

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My first OPi0 had temp not less than 55-60 C (without heatsink) without any load. Moreover, after set max cpu frequency to 1008MHz SoC temperature was above 50 in idle. Distro was Ubuntu legacy (3.4.113). Have to mention that I used WiFi without power-saving.

Updated:

I also was wandered about so low temperatures provided on the forum. Putting OPi0 outside of home (in box) get 25 Celsius degree (it was about a zero outside :-).

I think low temp can be caused custom build with unnecessary staff removed (moved to modules).

I'm looking forward for second ordered OPi0 to play with kernel optimizations (broke the first one).

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With two of them, I get 48°C idle. With the next two others, I get 51°C, so I'd say that although there may be some effect due to the PSU itself, there isn't any significant variation.

After that, I've retried the first PSU (the one that got me 60°C results), and now I get constant 49°C! What I'm wondering is that if somehow, the higher temperature wasn't caused by the first run of the Debian? Maybe some sort of background process was left running that caused it? I have three other OPi Zeros, so I'll definitely test things further. I admit this left me with some head-scratching

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My OPi0 hovers around 40°C all day, no heatsink, no real load, just toggling i/o in response to serial port input from an arduino.
If I put my finger on the H2+ it feels warmish, but just the act of pressing my finger on it reduces the temperature to 32°C.
There is no heatsink, ambient temperature is low 20's.

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Are you able to measure real voltage on test points (since PSU ratings...)? It would also be interesting whether other PSU characteristics (ripple, noise, whatever, I'm still an electrics noob) are important.

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Mine with a small 5v fan have temp beetwen 50-65c, I believe that it's just a coincidence that temperatures change with different power supply, but a few others test would be interesting. Anyway using the micro usb connector is not advisable, that pcb tracks are so small and the voltage drop drawing 2A maybe significantly.

Update:

It stop working, no led turn on and the cpu have a small blob on it. Very disappointed, evidently it cannot work out the box without an adequate heatsink.

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Just arrived my second OPiZ and I noticed that with absolutely the same conditions like room temp, PS, cable, etc new one is colder then previous (broken) in 10-15°C. During installing updates max temp was about 47°C without heatsink!

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Just arrived my second OPiZ and I noticed that with absolutely the same conditions like room temp, PS, cable, etc new one is colder then previous (broken) in 10-15°C. During installing updates max temp was about 47°C without heatsink!

Call me crazy but I feel like my Orange Pi Zero decides to heat up or not randomly on every reboot. In the exact same place and env. temperature, only few minutes aparts and a reboot later it idles around either 40C or 50C depending on its mood.

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not sure how much i trust the temp readings, with the armbian installs on all my pi boards it jumps around a good bit , but on other installs it stays about the same, and armbian build temps do not a match with a thermometer.

I have soldered a latching right-angle 2x13 pin connector to the Opi0 with the intent of connecting things to it despite having the NAS board connected (which hinders access to the header holes). I want it to be a data logger for arduino-type things that don't have enough local storage.

If I attach just the 26-way ribbon cable, the temperature stays about teh same. When I add the T piece to the other end, the temperature climbs (usually after a minute or so of doing nothing). It has just peaked at 89 C, now fallen back again to 85 C. The CPU is shown as running at 240 MHz almost all the time, total load almost always <10%.

Note that the T piece is not at this stage plugged in to a breadboard, though that is the goal. I have previously plugged it into a breadboard and I recall seeing the temperature reach 98 C as I desperately tried to shut it down gracefully.

Anyone know what is going on here? These are just passive components I'm adding.

What maximum temperature should I be aiming for?

Thanks, and sorry if I should have created a new thread instead.

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Sounds like you're shorting out pins. I had a quick look at the product page and it looks like the 26 pin header is "converted" into 20 pins. So most likely a number of the pins of the 26 pin header are connected together.

Put the pinot of the RPI header next to the OPI header to see which shorts you are creating.. ..

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Sounds like you're shorting out pins. I had a quick look at the product page and it looks like the 26 pin header is "converted" into 20 pins. So most likely a number of the pins of the 26 pin header are connected together.

Put the pinot of the RPI header next to the OPI header to see which shorts you are creating.. ..

Thanks- did that ... of the 26 pins, 5 are GND and they are all in the same place on Opi0 as on RasPi 1. Then 2 are 3v3, and again these are in the same places. and 2 are 5v, again in the same places. So there are 9 'power' pins all matching, and they are brought out as 5v, 3v3 and GND rails and a separate GND pin. Leaving 17 'data' pins on the Opi0 interface, which are brought out to 17 data pins on the adapter. Now, these are not necessarily labelled consistently, but there is no reason to think that any of them need to be shorted to each other by design.

But your suggestion got me thinking harder... and I noticed that while these pins are "in the same places", actually the layout could be mirror-imaged depending on the way that the 2x13-pin adapter is keyed. so I cut off the key from one end and put it on upside down.... and the problem seems to have gone away.

So I imagine that the adapter shorts together the 5v, or the 3v3, or the GND pins somewhere inside.... and when you put the adapter on upside down, that translates to a short between two pins that should not be shorted.

So thanks for the inspiration!

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Just a note that internal human body temperature is 37C, not surface temperature - unless you're bleeding profusely. The interface between internal (37C) and external (ambient) must necessarily be inbetween. This is why we stick the thermometer in our mouth and not on our finger. I would say 32C is the correct reading.

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My Orange Pi Zero reaches 85C - seems like the record for this thread... At such temperature sometimes only 1 of the 4 cores are available, and the CPU frequency and reduced to 480Mhz. Don't reboot the OPi often, but when I do it usually works for some time, like 1 hour. Have an external ssd attached. Run Google Assistant, which takes some of the CPU to have the hotword detection. Have PLEX, which requires the OPi a lot when video transcoding is required. Quite hot down here in Brazil at this moment, reaching 35C room temeprature. No heatsinks (I know its required for my use, waiting to be delivered).

I will check if the PSU can help reduce the temperature. Wann try to disable the WiFI. How can I do this?

Moral of the story: Seems to be numbers without meaning and there's something seriously wrong with calibration of the thermal readouts. Not fixable since all the people only report internal readings but not how hot the SoC is in reality (using a good IR thermometer or at least touching the chip)

I've experienced something similar today. I've checked my Orange Pi Zero (256MB) v1.4 numerous times over the past few days, and it's seems to follow a consistent pattern of working its way up to 58/59 degrees C over the first 10-15 mins, after which it remains at that temperature. It's simply idling, not running any programs at the moment.

I then added on the expansion board with the 2 USB ports, and the temperate went up to 63 deg. C, and stayed there.

I was using a power supply with 2 USB outlets, which (allegedly) outputs 2.1 amps total across the 2 outlets. It was powering the Orange Pi Zero and a Banana Pi. Having read the above, I tried powering the OPi Zero (with expansion board) separately with a Raspberry Pi Charger I had handy (5V and 2.5A, I think, and probably better regulated), and the temperature levelled out at around 53 deg C - so a drop of 9-10 degrees.

I thought I'd spoken too soon, as after running for around 10 hours at 53 deg C, the temperature climbed to 63 over 10-15 minutes. But an hour or so later it was back down to 53. Not sure what that was about.

I managed to lower it by another 5 degrees, to 48 deg C, by simply standing up the OPi Zero (with expansion board) vertically, on the edge with the pins (which is quite easy to do when it has the expansion board on it). Previously it was sitting flat on a piece of wood, so very little ventilation to the underside.

Allegedly it should be fine up to 70 or 80 deg C, so 48 deg C doesn't seem TOO bad - although that's at idle, with no case, on edge; and sitting next to this OPi Zero is my Banana Pi working as an Openmediavault NAS (with pretty infrequent activity), running at a cool 34 deg.

2ND EDIT:

Still a bit unpredictable. I booted up my OPi Zero last night and monitored it all night. No case, stood on edge, and just idling. Within 10-15 mins the CPU temp went up to around 57 deg C, and it stayed at that temp all night. This morning I simply rebooted it, without waiting for it to cool down. It went up to 47/48 deg C (only took a couple of mins, as it was already warm) and it's stayed at 47/48 for 4 hours.